The ugly wall.

An update from my last post to begin:

First, I did not get that job I mentioned I'd applied for toward the end.  I did apparently do well enough to get an in-person interview and for them to ask me to consent to a background check, but it was just another case of "close but nothing," and as we know, close doesn't count for anything.  All nothings are equal, no matter how close to something that nothing was.

But the "good news" is that I actually do have a section of my usual job to teach after all; a section got added three days before the start of the semester, so I got it.  It's not going well for various reasons that I suppose would be tangential to get into, so I won't.

What I will get into is another reason I said "good news" in quotation marks above: namely, the fact that this job is no longer a sustainable option for me.

Now that they got rid of one of the two courses I'm qualified to teach, I can no longer count on this job to keep me in the black.  Time was that I could usually count on two sections per semester, and now I'm lucky if I get one.  Getting one is by no means guaranteed at all, and even if I were lucky enough to get just one per semester, that does not keep me in the black if I want any kind of entertainment budget.

I still have enough savings that I can keep this rate of pay up for quite a while, but I really don't want to see myself hemorrhaging all the safety net money I've worked so long to shore up.

So this brings me back to that age old question I've been asking myself ever since I began this blog in 2012: when do I finally stop throwing good years after bad, accept that it's time to walk away, and find some crap low-pay job that at least pays better than the job in my field I have now so I can join the ranks of the working poor where I clearly belong, according to the library profession that will not have me?

If I were smart, clearly I would have done this years ago.  But here's the thing.

I'm going to take you back to a time long ago, when I was in high school.  I don't like going back to this time, so I will try not to stay long.  But here's a story that relates to the problem I have today.

In high school, I had a friend.  I know, I'm surprised too.  Let's keep going.  I'd walk home from school with this friend every day.  I was about a 12 minute walk from home, and for him tack on another minute or so.

This friend started dating someone.  So it goes.  One day he told me he'd be out soon, that I could wait for him.  He was going to make out with this person in the cafeteria, where people cooler than me often hung out at the end of the day.  I didn't understand why the cool kids wanted to hang out at school of all places when the day was done, but whatever.

So I'm sitting at my locker, non-existent butt aching from the hard tile floor,  staring at the very ugly wall in front of me.  For 15 minutes.  20.  30.  45.  An hour.  Longer.

I don't remember how long I ended up waiting, but it was long enough for me to be justifiably mad.  He never came out to tell me, "just go on without me," because he figured that after 10 minutes I'd have figured that out for myself.

The problem wasn't that I was "too stupid" to figure out myself that I should just walk the 12 minutes home alone, like that's a big deal.  The problem was that I was always afraid that if I left, it could be literally three seconds after I walked away that he might have come back out of the cafeteria.  And every second longer I stayed, the more likely it was that the next second would finally be the one.  It wasn't that staying was the "smart" move, it was just the fear that, after having invested so much time into waiting, I could be throwing that away when just one more second might have made all of that waiting, while a waste, at least not a complete waste.  At least all of the time I'd spent staring at the wall wouldn't be for nothing.

That's where I am now.  I'm 34.  I've lost.  I'm too old to accomplish the non-career goals I had in life (which were more important that my career goals to me).  It's over.  My life is ruined because of all of this waiting for my MLIS to pay off so I could finally pursue those goals.  At this point I should probably just cut my losses, join the working poor, and while away the end of my life because there's fuck else for me to do.

Yet here I sit staring at an ugly wall, because if I walk away now, I'll never know if waiting just one more month would have finally made all of these years something less than a complete waste.

Subterranean homelife blues part 2

I mentioned previously that I live in my parents’ basement.  That’s the life of an aspiring librarian: 30 and in a basement.

I’d like to talk a little more about what it will actually be like for you when you’re living in a basement, waiting to find a job that will employ you at least half-time after you get your MLIS.  If you predict that it will suck, you are so incredibly correct.

I recently came to realize that I’ve been living in basements for 12 years now.  As an undergrad at the age of 18 I moved into my grandparents’ basement to be close to my school (I didn’t have a car then), and watch their place when they were away traveling for months at a time.  After my undergrad days I moved back with my parents while getting my MLIS, and have been here since.  My old room was now my sister’s room, and my sister’s old room had been converted into a computer/study room, so I got the basement. 

12 years spent living in ugly, smelly basements.  Basements are going to be ugly and smelly no matter how you dress them up, that’s just the way it is.  You can dress up a pig, but… it’s still a pig, isn’t it?  You know what else a basement is like?  Cold.  Freaking cold.  As I type this it is late Spring, and Spring is actually the coldest time of the year for me.  Winter isn’t that bad because the heat is on, but come Spring the heat gets turned off and I’m sitting here wrapped in blankets, wearing sweatshirts, shivering.  No one as hot as I am should ever have to be this cold.  There are people who have literally frozen to death who have never, in their lives, been as cold as I often am in the Spring.  The only time it’s really nice is Summer, when I’m actually cool while everyone else is suffering from heat stroke.

I could deal with all of that… I mean, it’s not awesome, and I’d still walk around with a general sense of sadness on the inside that has leeched into me from my dank surroundings, but you know, I could deal.  Except for the other thing that is a common fixture of basements that you just can’t fight no matter how much carpet you put down…

Bugs.  Fucking bugs.  Running spiders as big as your hand.  Centipedes.  For those of you not “blessed” to live in a region with house centipedes, just imagine someone took ten long-legged spiders and glued them together.  That’s pretty much a house centipede.  I’d link you to a picture, but then I’d have to see it myself.  Even pictures of them make me uncomfortable.

I have always had a psychotic, paranoid fear of bugs.  I cannot live with having to share a planet with them.  The very thought of it makes me want to cry.  There’s only one thing that gives me just enough peace of mind to sleep knowing those things are skulking around: I sleep with a bug net around my bed.  Well, sort of.  It’s really less of a bug net and more of a pretty princess/harem girl kind of thing, but whatever, it does the job.  I’ve only seen a spider inside the net with me maybe two or three times in these past 8 years.  More often than that I see them outside the net.

I always have spray within reach at all times.  For the past 12 years I’ve been spraying powerful bug poisons near my bed, and I’m not sure exactly how well ventilated these basements are.  And I don’t care.  Lex Luther wore a kryptonite ring until he himself got cancer from it, because he hated Superman that much.  I don’t know how many years I’ve taken off of my life, but it’s something I need to do.  I said I can’t live on the same planet with bugs, and I meant it.  I will slowly kill myself to take as many of them with me as I possibly can.  And yes I realize I’m the supervillain in that analogy, and I’m ok with that.  What, am I going to pretend that someone who has declared all-out war on all bugs—and actually believes that the bugs are aware of this and are fighting back in coordinated efforts—is all that sane?  So sure, I’m the bad guy, I don’t care.  Say hello to the bad guy, you cockroaches.

But God damn, am I ever sick of living in basements.  More than a decade of this… success is really this impossible?  This is the new American way? 

Those of you who are just getting your MLIS, I hope you’re less afraid of bugs than I am.    

My "favorite" interview question, and answers.

Why do you want to work here?

-Because I need money.

-Because I’d like to stop being a failure now.

-Because I have to start somewhere.

-Because I sent out a million resumes and this was the only place to call me.

-Because I spent all day yesterday lying in bed.  Come dark, the shadows danced on the ceiling until they blurred together into non-Euclidean shapes with glowing red eyes and gaping mouths.  Their dispassionate, echoing laughter filled my ears as they swirled around, laughing, mocking me.  They made me feel bad about myself.  I lay there mesmerized, forgetting about my body.  There was nothing but them, me, and the laughter, God the laughter.  They saw inside of me, right through my skin and sinew, into my soul.  They found it empty.  Empty, lost, and forever alone, leaning out for anything but never touching something real.  They laughed.  It all went away that night.  The whole world went away.  I don't know if it was just me, or if I actually unmade the entire world with my mind.  I don’t know when I lost consciousness, but eventually my eyes blinked open as the light of a new day hit my face.  I still felt paralyzed.  For another hour, some part of me wanted to go back.  Wanted the world to go away again, just wanted everything to go away forever.  I’m afraid of what will happen if I spend another day like this, if one more day of me being a failure with nothing else to do were to go by.  I might lose myself again.  I might unmake the entire world forever.

-Because please?